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Mad cow beef in Australia

“US accused of sending mad cow beef here”
by Melissa Singer
A COALITION of cattle producers and consumer advocates has accused the United States of exporting beef to Australia despite a ban due to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. …

In this article, Singer looks at whether the United States of America has been sending their beef to Australia, contra to a ban on importing beef.

Beef was banned from being imported into Australia in 2003, except from disease free countries, in reaction to the Mad Cow cases that were breaking out across. Europe. Now, an investigation into import / export documents show that US beef may have been imported.

This does not mean that the beef from USA was infected, it simply means that USA is a country with a known outbreak, after the first BSE case was found in 2003.

Mad Cow disease is the name given to BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy: bovine=cow, spongform=turns brain into swiss cheese, encephalopathy=brain+inflammation).

The infectious agent is a prion, a mishapen protein, it not a virus or a bacteria. Being closely related “scrapie” the brain disease that infects sheep and goat, one theory of how Mad Cow got into the food system is from the feeding of infected corpses of sheep to cows. (A similar disease, Kuru, affects highlanders in New Guinea who ate practice a form of cannibalism)

In humans, the disease is CJD (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease). This should raise questions about ever meat product eaten in that country. That little nagging uncertainty, is this mouthful the one that will kill you?

In 1990, UK Agriculture Minister John Gummer, forced his 4-year-old daughter into the spotlight and tried to make her eat a burger, just days after a cat in England was found with BSE.

We have forced cows, naturally grass eaters to be become grain-eaters and carnivores, filled them with growth hormones, anti-biotics, leukemia, tumours, loaded with saturated fat and E.coli…. and a vegan diet is considered “extreme”?